


The Curse of Want

by cozythunderstorm



Category: Dark Souls II
Genre: Dissociation, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22336210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cozythunderstorm/pseuds/cozythunderstorm
Summary: A deprived Hollow finds her way to Drangleic, like a moth drawn to a flame.
Relationships: The Bearer of the Curse/Emerald Herald | Shanalotte, The Bearer of the Curse/Lucatiel of Mirrah
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	The Curse of Want

She is falling.

_She cannot stop herself. She looks over the edge of the decrepit gate, cloak whipping around her as wraiths tear through the air. The lake before her opens into a twisting, fathomless whirlpool. She recognizes the swirling dark—her back is branded with the same yawning void. It draws her, pulls her to the lip of crumbling stone._

_The wooden boat she had left at the ruin’s edge tipps over the side of the raging water and disappears into the darkness below. The shadowy trails of howling spirits blot out the light of the moon._

_She does not know why she is here. She cannot remember. She spreads her arms, and she falls._

_Darkness takes her._

Light.

She stirs. A cold breeze plays with the edges of her rough-spun clothes. Her fingers twitch as light pierces her eyes, a bright scar that cleaves the darkness, a wound in the night. Rising to her feet, she stumbles towards it.

_She stirs. Her fingers twitch as she lies in the mud, rain pouring down around her. She thinks she dies there._

_Thunder rumbles above. With a great effort, she stands, and walks on through the twisted woods._

Fire.

She stops in front of a door. Behind her, the sound of a river she does not remember crossing rushes down a waterfall. Before her stands a cottage, set into the base of a tree that grows straight and tall into the darkness above. Through cracks in the wood she can see the warm glow of firelight within. She raises a faltering hand.

_She raises her hand, reaching for the woman sitting across the room. A shawl hides the woman’s features, but she has a child in her arms. Whose child is it? She cannot remember._

_Her hand stops. Her fingers are inches away from a wooden door. She is standing in a dark cottage, lit only by dozens of candles arrayed across the floor. Slowly, she turns around. Beyond an open door, an old woman in red robes sits hunched over a spinning wheel, pulling yarn with gnarled fingers. Without looking up from her work, the old woman speaks._

“It’s an undead.”

She stands in another cottage, cleaner, with a blazing hearth and stairs winding up to a second floor. Two old women in red robes sit at a wooden table, while a young woman in a red dress serves them tea. A third old woman in red sits in a chair by the fire.

“They all end up here, all the ones like you,” the woman in front of the fire says without looking away from the flames. She raises a dismissive hand. “You spoke to that kind old dear, didn’t you?”

_“The symbol of the curse,” the old woman at the spinning wheel says. “An augur of darkness.”_

One of the old women at the table scours her with hard eyes. "You're finished. You'll go Hollow."

_The woman in red stops her spinning, the wooden wheel jerking to a halt. "By then, you'll be something other than human. A thing that feeds on souls."_

_Colors bleed from fragments of memory. She stands in a home. A woman sits nearby, a child in her arms. She has no face._

_“You will lose everything, once branded. Your past. Your future. Your very light. None will have meaning, and you won't even care.”_

_She reaches towards the woman and child, arm outstretched. The walls crumble into feathers around her._

The second old woman at the table laughs, a choking sound that turns into a rough cough. “What is your name?”

_The old woman in red looks up from her spinning wheel, piercing her with milky white eyes. "Like a moth drawn to a flame, your wings will burn in anguish. Time after time."_

_Try to recall your name._

The three old women in red watch her without speaking. Her lips, desiccated, crack to shape the word. Her throat, voiceless, rasps a broken sound.

“Moth.”

The three women laugh. “Well, at least you know your own name,” one at the table says. Despite her mocking tone, she reaches into her robes and pulls out a small piece of wicker. “Here’s your reward for sharing.”

She takes what is handed to her. Thin twigs woven into the barest outline of a body.

“It’s a human effigy. Take a closer look...Who do you think it’s supposed to be?”

She stares at the figure in her dead fingers. The lines of wicker meet on the figure’s chest, or perhaps its back, a single smoke-blackened point spiraling out into brown. She feels her vision narrow. Her entire world closes in on the small, fragile thing. Her scattered thoughts begin to collect. She feels as if she has been wandering far from herself, but now she is coming home.

She does not know how long she stares at the tiny effigy. The wicker cracks, and crumbles, and she blinks. The flesh of her fingers is soft again, no longer withered and bruised. Her body remembers her.

“All people come here for the same reason,” one of the old women in red is saying. “To break the curse.”

“You’re no different, I should think?” another asks. “Hmm…” She shakes her head. “Doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Well, you never know,” says the woman by the fireplace. All three of them laugh, as if sharing an old, private joke.

Moth leaves the old women’s cottage and ventures into the dark beyond their home. She walks through a shadowy canyon, full of twisting turns and narrow ledges that plunge perilously into an impenetrable abyss below. But her footsteps do not falter as they used to. She follows the promise of light, a narrow scar in the darkness, and she does not stumble or fall. She feels present in a way she has not for as long as she can remember.

Memory. She seems to have only fragments, shattered pieces that do not fit together when she tries to connect them. Her drab clothes and black cloak offer no hints, only that at some point she must have wanted to hide her face. Who she is or what she was called, why she is here and what she left behind, all as murky as the ravine through which she now treads.

But as she walks, the spot of light in the darkness grows. The brilliance of day blots out all detail even as she approaches, a blinding hole in the rock wall. Hesitating only a moment, she passes through the exit of the cave and stands blinking under the open sky. She sees the golden shimmer of the sea stretching out before her, hears it crashing against stone cliffs far below. A cold, salty wind blows off the water, and she raises her face to the warm glow of the setting sun. Its brilliant orange light is like a bonfire, setting the horizon aflame.

She does not know how long she stands there, but when she opens her eyes the sun is only slightly lower over the sea. For the first time she can remember, her mind does not stray far. She walks down the beaten dirt path, towards a tall monument of stone that stands tall and sharp against the burning sky. She finds a small collection of huts and houses clinging to the clifftop. At the edge of the cliff, looking out across the jagged coastline while the sea crashes hundreds of feet below, stands a woman. She wears a green cloak, and her hands are clasped in front of her. She does not turn as Moth approaches her, does not acknowledge her when Moth stops a few paces away.

_She is beautiful,_ Moth thinks, watching the woman watching the sea. _Like fire, if fire could mourn._ She is wondering what she could have meant by thinking this when the woman speaks.

“Are you the next monarch?” she asks. “...Or merely a pawn of fate.” The words sound ritual, but when she turns she looks at Moth directly, openly, with her emerald eyes. Eyes filled with sorrow. 

“Bearer of the curse,” the strange woman says. “I will remain by your side. Till this frail hope shatters.”


End file.
